Welcome to Irish SciFi News Newsletter #21

There has been a wind of change blowing through Irish SF fandom, and there is news this time around of events moving location, others perhaps having no location, and a major event organiser leaving the stage. And one of Dublin’s finest secondhand bookshops closing.

And so to the news, a lot of it not so good, but not all of it bad…

Dandelion Books Closes

Rory Lennon of Dandelion Books has finally decided to close his doors after ongoing declining sales figures over the last two years, with the shop finally closing down in early June. I started my career as a secondhand bookseller in Dandelion Books 15 years ago now, and its closure saddens me deeply.

The secondhand book trade in Dublin has been in almost terminal decline for years now, however. I can think of at least 20 shops in the greater Dublin area that are no longer with us, and apparently at least 3 more are to close in the near future, leaving Rathmines and Phibsboro without secondhand bookshops. Having said that, I appreciate the position Rory was in, as I was in much the same position myself with The Flying Pig Bookshop towards the end, and he is making the wisest decision for his one peace of mind.

None the less, its closure is a great loss, and another great Dublin landmark gone from us.

All Change at Octocon 2004

Since I wrote last about Octocon, there have been many changes. Firstly, there has been a change at the head of the committee, with James Brophy stepping down as chairman, and Michael Carroll taking his place. Michael has considerable experience at convention running, having been on the Octocon committee a few times over the years, including the committee that ran Eurocon here in 1997. He was also involved with the organisation of They Came & Shaved Us, the event in Dundalk last October.

Other changes at committee level include Caitriona McGrath stepping down, and Caitríona Hamman joining. Ms. Hamman is actually my sister, so I’m glad to see her getting involved at this level. I believe Liam Proven is a sort of committee member without portfolio at large in the UK, and James Bacon has an off-committee post as dealer liaison.

The other major change at Octocon has been a change of venue. They were originally to hold the convention in Chief O’Neill’s hotel in Smithfield, but, and largely in the wake of that same hotel’s less than wonderful handling of the DMZ’s various events, the hotel suddenly found that they were double booked, and Octocon had to find another home. This they have done by moving to the Glenroyal Hotel in Maynooth, in the lovely county of Kildare. They have also added a number of names to their guest list, including Irish author Michael Scott, Matt Smith, who is the current editor of British comic 2000 AD, Northern Irish comic artist Paul J Holden, and up and coming young Irish filmmaker John Vaughan, giving them a very eclectic guest list indeed.

I’d like to wish them well with their new location, and particularly to wish Michael good luck with his position as chairman.

More information from www.octocon.com.

Mecon 8 Announced

I’m glad to see the people up in Queen’s University, Belfast are getting themselves organised well in advance for next year’s Mecon SF Convention. You can never start your organisation too early, experience has taught me! Mecon’s fortunes have been mixed over the last few years, but I’ve a feeling that they’re going to do a really good job this time around. They’ve already set up a LiveJournal account for the con, which is being updated regularly, and which you can see at www.livejournal.com/communities/mecon_news.

Although the Senior Common Room at Queen’s is listed as the venue, there is some possibility of major building work being done there, and the committee are looking into the possibility of having to find another venue. Indeed, just over a week ago, the holding committee for the SCR at Queen’s voted to wind up the proceedings of the SCR, so I’ve no idea where this leaves next year’s con. None the less, the stated details are as follows, at least for the moment: Event: Mecon 8 Convention: Northern Ireland’s Premier Science Fiction Convention
Venue: Senior Common Rooms, Queen’s University, Belfast
Guests: To Be Announced
Dates: 11 - 13 March 2005
Website: www.mecon.org.uk
Live Journal: Click here

P-Con News

As I’m chairman of P-CON, I feel I should have something to add to all the above! However, no major news from us this month. Memberships continue to come in at a steady rate, and Ian has done some lovely new things with the con website, with all the guest bios finally finished, and plans to post some photographs from last year’s event in the near future.

The SCA, as featured further down in this NL, are coming to the con, to attempt to persuade people to join up, and to do some fighting displays. We also have two guests perhaps not mentioned here previously, but listed on the con site for a while now, in the persons of Maggie Furey and Paul Cornell. More details on them, as well as on the con in general can be had from the ‘site at www.slovobooks.com/phoenix.

End of an Era at DMZ

Last time around, I said “Next month, the Science Walk returns, along with news of an American publisher named after a Dublin street, and a comprehensive piece about the DMZ, who have been having troubles of their own of late.” Much of this is inaccurate, not least the mention of there only being a month between that NL and this one! However, I did at the time want to say something about DMZ Events, and didn’t realise that I would find myself writing what is effectively their obituary.

DMZ Events started off five years as an offshoot of a Babylon 5/Star Trek group called “The ResistEnce.” The prime mover from the beginning was Jonathan East. Their first event, in August 1999, was the showing of the Finale of Star Trek Deep Space 9, from which they took the name "The DMZ" (Demilitarised Zone), before eventually calling themselves DMZ Events. For the past five years they’ve regularly been showing episodes of American TV shows in advance of any of the TV stations over this side of the Atlantic at one-day events in various venues, as well as running a number of bigger events and media cons, with various starts from the TV shows they featured, especially those from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it’s spin-off, Angel.

They started their regular one-day events in Wynn’s Hotel in Dublin’s Abbey Street, before moving to Chief O’Neill’s Hotel in Smithfield, where the equipment was bigger, the room was better, and all seemed to be well. However, their fortunes changed towards the end of last year, and they lost something in the region of E3500 on the Prophecy event in October, and barely covered their costs on the Simply Amber event. Both of these events took place in Chief O’Neill’s against a background of increasing management hostility, and they eventually decided to move the one-day events back to Wynn’s Hotel. Meanwhile, Buffy had come to an end, and attendance figures started to slip, making it difficult to cover costs even for the one-day events. As well as this, Jonathan was finding he was having to do more and more of the work himself, especially as he is now living in the UK, and eventually, though reluctantly, decided to call it a day. The last one-day event was on Sunday the 23rd May, and was the showing of last episode of Angel.

It is in the nature of events and organisations based on the fans of one particular TV show, or series of shows, that they have a finite life, but while it lasted DMZ Events ran great events, gave a lot of pleasure to a lot of people, and you can’t say better than that. Particularly I would extend thanks and commiserations to Jonathan East, who was very easy for me to deal with, any time I wanted new pieces on his various events, and hope he doesn’t leave event organising for *too* long. He ran a tight ship, and made a lot of friends, myself amongst them.

Aeon Press Award

Albedo One, Ireland’s long-running genre short story magazine, has launched a new short story competition, called the Aeon Award. The award, which is hopefully to be awarded annually, will have a grand prize of €1000, as well as guaranteed publication for the six short-listed stories in Albedo One.

Short stories, which must not have been previously published, are to be no longer than 6000 words, and must be accompanied by an entry fee of 2 US dollars (cash only) or 3 euro to cover expenses. The first deadline for submissions is September 30th 2004. Subsequent to that, there are deadlines at the end of November 2004, January 2005 and finally at the end of March 2005. The best stories received in each two-month period, as chosen by a panel of eight judges, will eventually be whittled down to a short-list of six stories.

These six stories will then be passed on to the final judge, renowned science fiction author Ian Watson, who will pick a winner from amongst them. The shortlist and final results will then be published in Albedo One magazine and on the Albedo One website, and the final winner will be announced in August 2005 at Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland.

You can enter as often as you like, as long as you pay for each entry, so get cracking! More information from the Albedo One website.

Society for Creative Anachronism

Following on from Nina Shiel’s article about the SCA, here’s some information on the SCA’s regularly held Dublin meeting, as supplied by the enthusiastic and indefatigable Nina.

In Brief

• Although it’s by now too late to warn you in advance, I see that Andy Hallett has had to pull out of Apocalypse, the Buffy/Angel event in Belfast this weekend, for reasons of ill health. He was their main guest, as he plays The Host, Lorne in the Angel TV series.
• The July meeting of the Dublin-based SciFiClub is on the subject of Machine Intelligence, as will be on Tuesday 6th July, at 8:00 PM in Bowes Pub, Fleet Street, Dublin 2. Míchéal Úa Séadhgha, who gave a very well received talk on Lord of the Rings last year, asks can a machine ever be self-aware? Further meeting will be announced soon, I am told. More information on the SciFiClub website.
• Danielle Ackley-McPhail, who proved so popular at last year’s P-CON, tells me that she has a new book out, called Children of Morpheus. She tells me, “The collection of poetry and short fiction, illustrated by up-and-coming fantasy artist Ruth Lampi, will be launched at this year's Balticon Science Fiction convention over Memorial Day Weekend. Both author and artist will be in attendance. Events will include a launch party sponsored by the publisher, Lite Circle Books ( http://www.litecircle.org ), and an author reading from the collection.”
• In the time since the last newsletter, the Gay Trekkies celebrated their 3rd birthday, the James White Award winner for 2004 was announced, and we cancelled one table quiz on *extremely* short notice, but managed to successfully hold another one. It’s amazing what can come and go in such a seemingly short space of time!

And that’s my lot for the moment. Next time I’ll have news on Crow Street Press, as well as on new shows from Crazy Dog Audio Theatre, the long promised Science Walk part 2, the return of the feature articles, information about LARP Ireland, and hopefully some news on a major change in how we do the newsletter, as well as the accompanying site. For now, though, this newsletter has been *far* too long in abeyance, so I’ll end this one off, and go make plans with Ian on how to do it better next time.

Many thanks for all the good wishes while things were getting ‘interesting,’

Best wishes,
Pádraig Ó Méalóid
Irish SF News